Last month, Xfinity brought support for casting to the company’s Stream app, and in that update, the country’s largest cable provider saw fit to include support for casting your favorite shows to smart displays such as the Nest Hub and Hub Max. At that time, the subject of Netflix popped up in the discussion. The streaming giant is available almost anywhere you can access the internet but the company has stubbornly refused to allow its content to be sent to smart displays of any type and that includes Amazon’s hardware. Well, that is no longer the case and Google has beat everyone else to the punch.
Netflix on Nest
Starting today, owners of the original Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max smart displays can cast Netflix to their displays. The update will be available globally to all users that have access to the required services. To enable the feature, simply open your Google Home or Assistant application and ensure that Netflix is connected under the “Services” menu of your app. Once connected, you can then use the Assistant to open Netflix on your Nest smart display. You can open Netflix to browse or throw up your favorite show by saying “Hey Google, play Umbrella Academy” or your show of choice, of course.
Google has also brought “gesture navigation” to Netflix. Since the OG Nest Hub doesn’t have a camera, this feature will be exclusive to the Nest Hub Max. When you’re watching a show, you can face Max and raise your hand, palm forward to play and pause at will. Of course, you can always use voice commands to access this and many other features on your smart display. This makes the Nest Hub family the only smart display with access to Netflix content and that’s a huge deal. There was no mention in the announcement whether this will roll out to other Assistant devices in the future and I suspect Google will keep this one in-house for at least a little while. It’s a great selling point for the Nest Hub lineup and honestly, should have happened months ago. You can read the official announcement over at The Keyword. The next thing Google needs to address is getting full DRM protocols on Chrome OS so we can have all of our HD content on our Chromebooks. Just sayin’.
